"Where are you?"

It's the most-sent text in every trade business. A customer calls asking when the sparky will arrive. You don't know — so you text him. Five minutes later, no reply. You text again. Eventually he calls back: "Yeah, stuck at the last job, be there in 20."

Meanwhile the customer's annoyed, you've wasted 15 minutes playing phone tag, and you still don't really know what's happening with the rest of your team.

This is the reality for most trade businesses with 3+ people on the road. You're flying blind.

Why phone calls and texts don't scale

When it's you and one other person, a quick text works fine. But as soon as you've got 3, 4, 5 people out on jobs, the communication overhead explodes:

  • You can't text everyone every 30 minutes asking for updates
  • By the time someone replies, the information is already stale
  • You never have the full picture — just fragments from whoever last replied
  • Customers call expecting you to know where your team is, and you don't

The result: you're reactive instead of proactive. You find out about problems after they've already annoyed the customer.

What a dispatch map changes

A live dispatch map shows you every team member on a map, updated in real time. You open it and immediately see:

  • Who's on site — green pin at the job address, with how long they've been there
  • Who's in transit — moving pin between jobs, so you can estimate arrival times
  • Who's running late — they should've been at the next job 20 minutes ago, but they're still at the last one
  • Who's gone quiet — no location update in a while, might need a check-in

When a customer calls asking "where's my plumber?", you don't need to text anyone. You just look at the map and give them an honest answer in 5 seconds.

History mode: where was everyone yesterday?

The live map shows you right now. But what about yesterday? Last week?

History mode lets you pick any team member and any date, and see their full trail — everywhere they went, every stop they made, how long they stayed. This is useful for:

  • Verifying job attendance — were they actually at the Henderson site for 3 hours like they said?
  • Resolving customer disputes — "Your team was only here for 30 minutes." You can check and show proof.
  • Spotting patterns — is someone consistently taking a 45-minute lunch when it should be 30? You don't need to micromanage — just check when something feels off.

"Isn't this Big Brother?"

This is the most common pushback. Your team might worry that GPS tracking means you're watching their every move.

Here's how to frame it: you're not tracking them to catch them out. You're tracking jobs. The dispatch map exists so you can answer customer questions, schedule efficiently, and resolve disputes fairly — in everyone's favour.

Most tradies come around quickly once they realise:

  • It saves them from "where are you?" texts
  • It proves they were on site when a customer disputes hours
  • It doesn't track them when they're clocked out

It's a professional tool, not a surveillance system.

How GPS tracking works on-site

The tracking runs in the background on their Android phone. They don't need to do anything — it starts automatically when they clock in and stops when they clock out. The app sends a GPS ping roughly every minute, which builds up a detailed trail of their day.

The key technical points:

  • Battery-friendly — uses Android's native location services, not constant GPS polling
  • Works offline — if they lose signal (basement, rural job), pings queue up and send when they're back online
  • Accuracy — typically within 10-30 metres, good enough to confirm they're at the right address

Ready to see where your team is?

Work Flow Trade's dispatch map shows you every team member in real time, with full history trails and stop detection. Know where everyone is without sending a single text. $50/month flat (founding price — limited time) — the whole team, no per-user fees.